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Thursday, 14 November 2013

Slasher Audiences and Target Audience

Male gaze in Psycho: scream queen in shower

Summary of Research into Slasher Film Audiences

Often a movie's main characters reflect their target audience, and the slasher film is a prime example of this. The characters are more often than not teenagers/college students, and there is usually a couple. This reflects the target audience. A slasher film's target audience is usually 15-24 year olds. The primary audience is men as they are more likely to be able to interact with the characters on screen. Women can also interact with those on screen but they react in a different way to men. Laura Mulvey's theory of male gaze is very heavily supported in the slasher genre, with the scream queens often objectified through the use of costumes, shot types, script, etc. Generally there is usually a romance subplot or love triangle or couple within the main characters of the film. This is to draw in the female audience, and widen the general audience too. The secondary audience is dating couples. Films are sometimes released near to holidays such as Valentine's Day and school holidays to draw in couples or teenagers with spare time. Teenagers make up the vast majority of cinema-goers, so targeting this group of people can draw in large audiences to the cinema.

Our Target Audience

We decided our target audience would also be 15-24 year olds. This is because this was the most common target audience we saw throughout our research in to the genre. This tells us there is an already established audience for the slasher genre, and as filmmakers we would utilise this by also targeting the same audience. We also decided to have two scream queens. This is using the male gaze theory to attract men into the film.